Is wearing a thong (g-string) good for your health?

You will agree with me, that thongs or G-strings are one of the sexiest, most provocative underwear worn by women. But well I was just wondering, if there is any male-inspired conspiracy behind fashionable male underwear increasing in size from panties/briefs to boxers while fashionable female underwear has decreased in size from cover-all panties to a barely-there thong. I know that fashion demands that to look sexy, sacrifices must be made; from painful stilettos, to shrinking underwear, but pause for a minute, wouldn’t you want to find out if there’s a health perspective?

Is your thong Good or bad for our health?Thongs may not be bad for you, but if you notice that you are prone to getting either urinary or vaginal infections, then your thong may increase your risk by making it easier and qucker to get re-infected and also making it harder to permanently treat your infections.Generally women should wear cotton underwear as they are more absorbent and allow air to pass through, and help you stay as dry as possible down there, which is very important for your sexual health. These days most sexy underwear are made from fabric that will not allow air pass, and is non-absorbent, even though some manufacturers have generously lined the crotch with cotton, this is not entirely sufficient as the rest of the material will still allow moisture collect and often leads to infections.

What many women call toilet disease is often times a vaginal infections that is not-sexually transmitted. Vaginal infections that are not STIs eg. Candidiasis & Bacterial Vaginosis are caused by imbalance or overgrowth of the bacteria/fungi that lives in the vagina. What many of us don’t know is that there are different friendly microorganisms that colonise different parts of our body e.g. skin, mouth, intestines and in exchange for living with you, they keep bad/harmful micro-organisms away. Unfortunately, sometimes your lack of or your excessive hygiene habits can cause an imbalance (read more about this in my article on toilet disease).How can your thong be the cause?:1. For example when you wear your G-string, the lips of your vagina (vulva) is usually not fully covered and they are exposed to your tight jeans and leggings leading to more moisture collecting between your thighs and the material. This creates a warm and cozy environment for germs to grow.

2. As a girl child, I’m sure you were taught by mummy to (tamba correctly) wipe your buttocks from front to back, never the reverse, so you wouldn’t sweep bacteria from your anus to your vulnerable vagina. But now that you’re a woman, your rope-like underwear that constantly shifts up and down during your busy day can serve as a perfect bridge for conveying diarrhoea causing bacteria like E-coli to dance across from your anus to your vagina, effectively destroying mummy’s good advice.

3. According to a specialist, Dr. Ghofrany, thongs also carry the risk of external irritation and inflammation. “I see more patients with skin tags on their vulva and near their rectum, in the exact distribution of the thongs,” Dr. Ghofrany tells us. “I sometimes ask a patient, ‘So you wear thongs a lot?’ And their response is always ‘Yeah! How can you tell?’ And it’s because of the skin tags, small ‘piles’ of soft tissue that occur from the skin being constantly rubbed in the same spot. These happen traditionally at bra lines and neck lines, and now increasingly at thong lines!”

4. Wearing a thong while you’re on your period is now in vogue and can also slightly increase your risks. If you’re already prone to infections, a health professional Dr. Rabin says, your period is a particularly vulnerable time. “The pH of the vagina is normally acid pH, and blood makes the pH more alkaline, and when your pH goes up, that’s when bacteria has a better chance of growing” But, if you don’t have a history of period infection issues, you should be fine to wear thongs during that time of the month

Other health concerns: can thongs cause hemorrhoids? Dr. Ghofrany assures us that thongs won’t actually cause hemorrhoids, but they can worsen them if you have one. “If the thong is kind of ‘hiked up’ in there, it can irritate the anus and further inflame your hemorrhoids,” she says, but hemorrhoids can’t actually be blamed on thongs.

Recommendation 1: Buy cotton thongs, wash them often and maintain your own hygiene down there to avoid any major issues.

Recommendation 2: If you insist on wearing silk and satin thongs, you should consider adopting a system where you change your underwear at last twice a day, to prevent all that stickyness collecting between your thighs and butt cheeks.

So do you think thongs are good or bad for you or your woman? Leave a comment for me below
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www.pharmacistreny.com is a unique health website that functions like an online magazine for reliable personal health knowledge tailored to the needs of Nigerians. As our niche, we address sexual and reproductive health issues that affect men, women and youth and are often under discussed and left untreated.